Tom Knoblauch is the author of My Rotting Body and the soon-to-be-published Influenza, Nebraska. You can find My Rotting Body on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Yeesh. Why is writing a blog post so much harder than writing a novel? Why does the structure hide and why can’t I have 5 pages of dialogue?My novels My Rotting Body and the soon-to-be-published Influenza, Nebraska are psychological thrillers. I try to distance myself as the author from them so I don’t influence any interpretation of the events. In that same sense, I’ve avoided writing about my works in progress for fear of having too much of an influence with my online rambling. While this all sounds good in theory, it’s commonly accepted that authors are supposed to have a strong social media presence and a website. Those that go the extra mile are the ones who do regular blog posts. No one except Thomas Pynchon is allowed to be Thomas Pynchon anymore. I’ve forced myself to dabble in blog posting and have found the results to be more of a convincing argument against buying my books than a promising tease of brilliance. “This guy can’t even commit to writing a good blog post. How can the novel be any good?”That’s what the imaginary well-dressed man with wavy hair sipping a cup of black coffee says after reading my posts. I’ll admit—he has a point. Why can’t these things be brilliant little teasers that get retweeted and Google shared and Facebook liked? Is it a matter of effort or a matter of talent? Does a thriller get judged under the same criteria as a 500 word blog post? I’d like to stay out of it if I can. Let the wavy haired Yuppie offspring come to his own conclusion. I respect the authors who can juggle both successfully. There’s a lot of them out there. Rainstorm Press is the dictionary example of it. It’s the way of the future. I can’t hide myself. I don’t want to be the old guy spending 30 minutes trying to find the calculator app on his iPhone. By the way, the calculator app? It’s under Extras because it’s not as important as the Game Center or your Facebook app.